Sex toy myths – why you should stop worrying and get stuck in

Strap yourselves in – it’s time for my semi-annual rant about weird sex toy myths. On the course of my travels throughout the internet, I often come up against beliefs that strike me as bizarre, or just plain wrong. So to arm yourself against these forces of ignorant darkness, I hand you the light-sabre of sex toy mythbusting. Enjoy.

Thanks to increased discussion of sex
robots and other artificially intelligent love machines, this myth is
only going to get spread around more before it gets squashed
completely. But it remains a myth: sex toys will not replace you.
Whether it’s a bullet vibe you’re bringing to the bedroom to help
your partner get off, or a giant sex swing erected on your porch that
you’re planning on using together, sex toys might improve your life a
bit, but they’ll never replace you. It would be a bit like
professional chefs worrying that they’ll be made redundant by the new
MagiMix.

Oh HELLO bane of my life. This myth is
frustrating for a number of reasons: firstly because it assumes that
all gay dudes get off in the same way (they don’t – there’s as much
variety in gay sex as there is in any other kind of sex) but also
because it puts a lot of straight dudes off using fantasticanal sex toys which can bring them so much joy. I can prove this to you pretty
easily, by simply pointing to one of the (many, many) guys I’ve been
with who love prostate stimulation, butt plugs, and pegging, yet who
steadfastly refuse to acquiesce to my requests for a two-dudes-one-me
threesome.

Gay, straight, bisexual, whatever: anal
toys are fun. They are not some magic 8 ball determining what kind of
people you fancy.

This old chestnut is a criticism mostly
thrown out at ‘anatomical’ sex toys – the ones that look like a
vulva, bum or mouth. Many of them are modelled on the vulvas of
famous porn stars, so you can see what it would look like if you were
actually having sex with whoever your favourite person is.

Are they creepy? Well, the answer to
this is going to depend strongly on your personal preference. The
very fact that they exist and some people use them just means that
there’s a market. Personally, I find onesies incredibly creepy, and
when I go to summer festivals and see early-twenties hipsters
wandering around dressed like a giant cow, I am liable to go into a
minor panic. THE UDDERS. THE FURRY UDDERS. But my personal tastes are
just that: personal. I would no more tell someone they were creepy
than I would wear a onesie myself. Creepiness is in the eye of the
beholder.

Sex toys are for solo use only

Hands up: most of the time I use sex
toys, I am using them on myself. But that’s because I work from home,
and while my other half is in the office I am able to cram in plenty
of wank breaks between deadlines. But some of my best partnered sex
has happened thanks to sex toys – whether it’s one of us coming
home with a newdildo to try, or a Friday-night shag where we dump
the entire contents of our bondage box on the bed and get to it: sex
toys enhance shagging in the same way ketchup enhances chips. They
can be used alone, but they’re notsolely for use alone.

So here’s a weird one: a survey
released by a US sex toy company this week revealed that a quite
astonishing number (well, astonishing to me, at any rate) of people
keep their sex toys secret from their partners. Of people who owned
sex toys, 36% of women and 46% of men did not tell their partner
about their sex toys. That’s a hell of a lot of people who have to
keep their bedside drawers locked in case their other half stumbles
on it when hunting for aspirin. Now, it’s not for me to judge
people’s reasons: some may know that their partner would be sad to
find out about their toys, others might be in coercive relationships
where their partner would react very badly, and others might just
enjoy it more if they think the whole thing is private.

But given the numbers, it feels worth
reiterating: sex toys should not be embarrassing. Though some people
might giggle at the sight of a massive dildo, that’s mostly just a
relic of a society that still has a very fixed and normative view of
sex. Sex toys are the cherry on top of the cake of your love life:
even if some people want to pick it off, that shouldn’t stop you from
tucking in.

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